Warrior
For a description of the role of warriors within the lore of Warcraft, see Warrior lore. The Warrior is a versatile melee class with the ability to both inflict and absorb a great deal of damage. Warriors compensate for their lack of magical abilities by having a wide range of melee abilities. As such, the warrior depends on rage instead of mana to use most of his abilities. It is classed as a Hybrid DPS/tank having two roles within a group. Either it acts as the tank, stopping other people from gaining threat and therefore allowing less well defended classes from taking damage. Or if Fury specced it acts as a DPS class causing a large amount of melee damage. Warriors can use all types of weapons and armor except wands, and relics. Races The Warrior class can be played by the following races: Alliance * Dwarves * Gnomes * Humans * Night Elves * Draenei Horde * Orcs * Trolls * Undead * Tauren Rage By default, a warrior's rage bar is empty. Warriors can gain rage by being struck in combat, dealing damage, drinking rage potions, or using certain Warrior Abilities. Most of their abilities require a certain amount of rage in order to be activated. When a Warrior exits combat, any left-over rage slowly decays until the bar returns to empty. The rate at which rage decays can be controlled through talents. A warrior's rage bar will drop to 10 immediately if he switches his stance unless he has allocated points to the Tactical Mastery talent. Warriors need to be in combat to generate rage. The longer the battle, the more rage a warrior can accumulate. This often leads to the warrior to the strategy of "filling up" his rage bar on a weaker foe before moving on to a more powerful enemy. A warrior with a full rage bar can quickly unload a high amount of damage. Stances thumb|An orc warrior. The warrior has different stances for different situations. Which stance to use will also be determined by the Warrior's talents. *Battle Stance: The standard starting stance for all Warriors. A balance of offensive and defensive abilities. (-20% Threat Generated) *Defensive Stance: As it suggests, more defensive oriented and fewer offensive damaging moves. Best used when playing in the main tank role (-10% Damage Received, -10% Damage Inflicted, +30% Threat Generated). *Berserker Stance: All out attack with little regard to the Warrior's own health. Best used when somebody else is tanking and you need full-on DPS (+3% Crit, +10% Damage Received, -20% Threat Generated). Some Warrior Abilities are limited by which stance you are in, so choose wisely! Remember that the rage bar is emptied whenever switching stance unless you have Tactical Mastery. Abilities The Warrior has various abilities based on the current battle stance or usable with any stance. For more detail, see Warrior Abilities. Talents Warrior talents are split into three trees: Arms A general mix of talents comprised mostly of utility and offensive abilities. The Arms talent tree is capped by the Endless Rage ability, which causes Rage gained from all damage caused to be increased by 25%. The Arms tree mainly enhances burst damage emphasizing powerful (usually slow) two-handed weapons with use of Mortal Strike. Arms warriors usually prefer two handed weapons with high top end damage, as this will increase the potential of the Mortal Strike ability. Fury Primarily offensive, the Fury talent tree is capped by the Bloodthirst ability, though the tree really relies on Flurry to create most of its damage. Fury warriors are DPS superstars--though you may lack some of the burst capability of an Arms warrior, over a long boss fight you will out damage him. For this reason, Fury warriors are sometimes nicknamed "Rogues in plate". Fury warriors usually prefer two one handed weapons, with similar priorities as a rogue in terms of stats and weapon damage. Protection This tree is all about the proud tradition of swashbuckling: Boastful and taunting, this warrior has specialized in fighting with "sword and board", that is, a weapon in the main hand and a shield in the off-hand. The talents of the protection tree allows you even greater offensive and defensive advantages of this fighting style, allowing you to use the shield as a potent and crippling weapon. Protection talents also allows you to build aggro faster and to greatly enhance your survivability. These abilities are ideal for warriors in a tanking role. In PvP the greater survivability and added capabilities of the protection warrior compensates for the slower damage output. A talent calculator can be found at WoWHead.com. Further Information See Starting a Warrior for some advice when starting out. See Warrior sets for information about Warrior-specific set items. See Warrior PvP for advice on playing nicely with others. See Warrior Tactics for more general class advice. See Warrior Instance Grouping Guide for tips in Instances. See Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth for amusement as somebody tries (in vain) to explain to Flintlocke what warriors are supposed to do. ---- Category:Classes Category:Warriors